Certain products such as prescription pharmaceuticals must be tracked very carefully from manufacturer to user. It is particularly critical in many cases to determine just who the end user is and to ensure that the container is not reused for another product or otherwise misused. It is also necessary to be able to locate pharmaceuticals in the event their recall becomes necessary.
In the particular case of a prescription pharmaceutical it is essential to determine at what point the product actually passes from the end of the distribution chain to the consumer. In this manner any misuse or theft of inventory prior to being dispensed can be controlled.
To date the standard means of doing this is by making a note of the container number or the like as a product passes along its distribution chain. When ultimately dispensed the container number is reported back and matched, for instance, with a prescription and/or user identification number. Such a procedure is relatively failure-prone in that any misidentification subverts the system, and it still remains possible to pass off an already dispensed container as a legitimate one.
It has been suggested to provide a container label to which in turn is applied a releasable patch that can be peeled off and affixed to an inventory record, thereby ensuring both that a proper identification number will be entered on the record by affixing the patch thereto and that the remaining label will be left without its number. Such a system is open, however, to misuse in that it is possible to switch a patch from one such container to another.